faderift | MOD EVENT ↠ IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

Laura fails to recognize the look on Tessa's face--but only for a moment. She can smell what it is, she thinks, the agony of fear and sorrow and sex all turned around inside each other. And she doesn't like it in her; it seems wrong in some way she cannot place, Tessa covering her mouth to keep from screaming.

"They will hang us." Or cut off their heads or feed them poison or boil them alive or allow dogs to attack them or make mages send demons into their minds--they will do something, and she and Tessa will be dead. But--

But Tessa can't leave the streets, not the way Kiden did. If she could, she would already have gone home to her family. Laura doesn't know enough about elves to guess why Tessa has ended up here, but she learned just enough to realize there's likely as little for her, out in the world, as there is for Laura herself.

"I will kill them," she says. This way, Tessa will not have to. They will not try to hurt her, if the rest of Cumberland comes for a murderess.

"I'll lure them outside," she offers, after a moment of deliberation. She isn't a stranger to violence, but she's small and easily overpowered. Useless without a weapon. But she can be bait.

The idea of pretending to be willing, pretending to be interested in any of the men here turns her stomach, but she'll do what she has to. Perhaps this one won't want willing, anyway. She won't have to pretend in that case. She can go to him, vulnerable and scared, plead for mercy and protection, the perfect victim for him to take advantage of. And then they'll have him.

"What does Deepstalker look like? I can get him alone, Kändler will follow. We can be gone before anyone knows they're dead."

"The balcony." They can't do this on the street. But--overlooking a courtyard, they can climb down, then over the wall again, and away. If Tessa struggles, Laura will help her, and then she will give Tessa the all-important objective of deciding where they will go. Kirkwall is to the east and Nevarra City to the north, and everything else about the world outside Cumberland, save the estate she came from, is a mystery. Tessa will have to know the correct locations to venture towards. "One at a time."

These are the plans she knows how to make. One and then the other, quickly and so quietly that they do not have time to scream. She gives another glance back to the room she came from, but he must still be bandaging himself. They have enough time for a description of Deepstalker. "He is tall. And--too much hair. Brown. A purple coat."

Laura, having decided they've talked enough to commit to this plan--and frankly, more than she's said all at once in weeks--walks away without preamble. It will only work if she is already on the balcony, waiting.

Edited 2019-11-28 23:56 (UTC)

She's on the balcony, her lower back pressed against the railing. Her plan worked, and she hates it. She hates him for everything he is and what he's doing, can't hear what he's saying but she knows it's nothing good. Deepstalker. He makes her feel like prey, and he's towering over her, cornered her against the railing before the door even closed behind him.

His body is too close, his hand on her throat but not applying pressure, not yet. She knows this game well. It's there to remind her that she's helpless against him. Bastard. Her heart is pounding, breaths coming in shallow gasps, body trembling, and through her fear, she thinks she can hear what he's saying. Scared, little rabbit? Is that the reason they call you rabbits? Or...you know what else rabbits are known for, don't you?

And for a split second, she wonders if Laura is even here. What if she's not? If she's just cornered herself alone with this monster. Open the lion's maw and place your head within.

Laura is there, waiting in the shadows for the opportunity they have planned. The mission is simple: wait for the door to close, then kill him.

But when Tessa comes out there with him, Laura feels something in her stutter. Her breath snags on something in her chest, seeing him loom over someone else. It's seeing herself, but from afar, knowing what's about to happen, nearly feeling his breath on her own skin. She's the reflection in a mirror, dark to Tessa's light, muscles bunching up inside her skin like she's been running for hours.

You cannot fail your objective. If she does, she will have betrayed Tessa's trust--and she'll have to see the results of it, remember every moment of every time it's been her trapped within someone else's grasp. This mission must be completed, or--

She is a third person as she takes a silent step toward him, feeling herself move and feeling certain she isn't doing it. Three people in this plot--Tessa, Laura, and whatever moves Laura's body--and only now does she realize she didn't account for Deepstalker's height, in coming up with a plan. They must do this in a way that will not make noise, and he is too tall for throat-slitting. He'd feel her touch long before her claws cut out his windpipe.

Lungs. His lungs are within reach, if she is lucky about stabbing him. This always relied on luck--she just didn't realize it. Laura waits until she's directly behind him, no longer daring to breathe, to bring out both fists' worth of claws, and then she's stabbing into his back. Four punctures at a time, slicing through muscle and bone, in until her knuckles hit the smooth fabric of his coat, then out again, and in.

It is messy. She doesn't notice.

She could collapse with relief, knowing that her trust was well-founded, but panic keeps her upright, extends her arms and forces her hands over Deepstalker's mouth to keep him quiet. If the next person through that door isn't Madame Kändler, they're fucked.

Blood runs out of Deepstalker's mouth as it opens behind Tessa's hands in a silent scream. It seeps between her fingers and down her arms in little rivulets, and when even more blood splatters out of the puncture wounds made by Laura's claws, it's all Tessa can do to restrain her reaction to a flinch as the droplets strike her.

"Laura," she hisses when she finds her voice. They won't have time to move the body, there are already footsteps on the other side of the door and they're speeding up and the clack clack clack of that jewelry is almost loud enough to drown out the sound of Tessa's own blood pumping in her ears. "Laura!"

She doesn't hear her name the first time it's whispered. The second time, Laura blinks, claws going away as she stares at the mess of her procurer's back. It's too dark to see what shade his coat's turned, but the smooth fabric has shredded, and everything feels damp.

The last time this happened, there had been a reason. Reis had made bombs that did this to her--worse than this, because when she thinks, in the fraction of a breath after Tessa calls her name, she can remember stabbing Deepstalker--but this had been her. Fear and panic and two years' worth of swallowed anger became pulp on her knuckles.

She would like to vomit. She would like to make the blood on her skin her own, not his. But they have limited time, and Deepstalker's body is still hefted on Tessa's. Laura puts her arms around him, for what she hopes is the last time, and pulls him away from the railing of the balcony, struggling backwards as the still-warm bulk of flesh rests back against her torso. She can feel his blood oozing through her bodice, along the bare skin of her neck, her hair sticking to his wet shoulder--

And the door opens. Laura drops the corpse on her boots, claws flashing out as she turns to find the woman who'd harangued Tessa earlier. The madam doesn't scream or run or turn for assistance, though; after a surprised moment, she takes a step forward, shutting the door behind her, and asks Tessa, "What have we here?"

It takes her too long to respond. She's staring down at the body, bloody fingers gripping the railing behind her tightly as if she can't trust her legs to hold her up. The Madame snaps her fingers.

"Look at me when I'm speaking to you, girl," It's a warning spoken far too calmly for someone who hasn't seen this kind of carnage before. Tessa's attention snaps-to; and Kändler takes a step closer. "Tsk tsk tsk, you've ruined that beautiful dress I so graciously bought for you. What-ever were you thinking?"

"I...h-he--" Tessa blinks rapidly, trying to clear her vision. Between the blood on her face and the fat tears welling in her eyes, the world has gone blurry.

"It looks to me like you've gone and murdered a very well-known member of society," the Madame doesn't wait for Tessa to try and struggle through an excuse. "And you've landed youself in even further debt to me in the process. My generosity is not boundless. Why don't you try telling me why I shouldn't just turn you in, hm? Your little friend may be the knife, but you're the hand wielding it, are you not?" Another step closer. One more and she'll be close enough for Tessa to grab her, silence her while Laura lands the killing blow.

Tessa looks down at the balcony beneath her feet and mumbles something under her breath. She's told to repeat herself, an order with which she doesn't comply. Losing her patience, the Madame steps closer and grabs Tessa's face with her bony, claw-like hand.

"I told you to look at me--" Her face twists in anger and confusion as she sees the intensity of Tessa's stare, but it's too late for the old woman to react. Bloody hands wrap around her neck in a lunge that topples her over backwards, Tessa on top of her. The elf is not strong; she can't squeeze hard enough to kill Kändler herself, especially not while her hands are shaking so. But it keeps the Madame from making any noise beyond the soft whumpf of so many yards of skirt hitting the floor.

"You...can't touch us," Athessa whispers, trying her best to keep the struggling old woman pinned.

Laura's objective is to hide Deepstalker's body, or at least make sure it is not the first visible thing when the balcony door is opened. But her other objective is to ensure Tessa is not harmed by her madam (and a third, she must not draw attention to us), and that seems more important. Tessa looks as if this is her first corpse; she looks lost, like she was never meant to be in this house in the first place.

And if that is the case, if she is not meant for death and dying and other people's hands, Laura will keep her safe.

She is already coming closer when the madam closes her hand around Tessa's chin, edging back toward the door in hopes that she might be able to stab her from behind again--more carefully, for fear the claws might go all the way through her and catch Tessa, too. But she dives when Tessa does, falling into a crouch at the woman's head, looking down at her through blood-matted hair.

The madam's mouth is moving, but if she's forming words rather than gasps for air, Laura doesn't know what they are. She wouldn't care, even if she did. Forcing her hand over the madam's mouth, pressing it down flat and hard enough that it's hard to bite or move her head, she murmurs, "Move your hands."

Her claws are shining above the fingers of her other hand. This will be the quickest way.

She does as she's told, for once, and shifts to grab the Madame's wrists and still their desperate clawing motions.

This is it. This is it. We're almost free. Tessa bites her lip, but doesn't look away. She's going to watch this crone get what's coming to her.

The woman struggles harder when Tessa's hands come away from her neck, enough so that Laura is tempted to break her neck instead. But her claws are already out, and she's already slicing two deep lines into her throat. This is rote, simple and painfully familiar--but in a distant way, the first throat she's slashed in years.

It takes little time for her to bleed out. Laura chooses to watch Tessa instead of the madam, judging by feel when it's safe to pull her hand away from the dying mouth.

Kändler's struggling stops before her heart does. A moment that Tessa watches happen, confirmed by the weakening pulse in the woman's wrists. It's only after there's no doubt that she's dead that Tessa looks up at Laura, meeting her gaze.

They did it. They really did it! Sure, they're on their own now, but better that than property, right? Tessa smiles through the shock in abject wonder, and then the door to the balcony crashes open and everything goes black.

-

Athessa jolts awake, hair clinging to her sweat-dappled skin. She's on the floor of the group quarters, blanket and sheet tangled around her legs. It doesn't look like she woke anyone up when she fell, a mercy for which she breathes a sigh of relief. Just a dream. Just a fucked up, shitty dream.

She realizes she's awake when her fists hit wood, a piece splintering into her knuckle. It takes a moment to reorient herself: all six claws gouging the door to her room, no one attacking, only Laura herself kept off the ground by the thickness of the wood she leapt at. Without much care, she makes the claws disappear, dropping back to the stone floor, and feels over her front, just in case.

Nothing. Deepstalker did not die that way. She cannot wear his blood when she killed him months ago. It is a dream, the kind she has heard people talk about lately: someone wanders in and sees things, things they recall after. Something in the Fade is broken, someone said. Which means--she freezes.

Laura hurries back to her bedside table and grabs her crystal, pacing around and around in the small space, and sends a message to Athessa. Her voice is still sleep-thickened, rumbling like a growl. "Do not tell anyone."

Athessa's crystal had been hanging from the corner of her bunk, and when she fell, it fell too. Without looking away from the middle-distance (a.k.a. the ceiling), she reaches over and grabs it.

"Right back at ya, kiddo," She scrubs a hand over her face and leaves it covering her eyes. "But it's--that's not how it happened anyway so..."

"I know." There is too much inside her suddenly, lightning moving through her flesh, but if she leaves her room, she might be overheard. The temptation to climb up to the top of the Gallows and breathe in the cold winds blowing off the sea must be resisted.

Instead, she circles her room, hardly noticing anything except the feel of walking. And she waits for Athessa to say something else, if she will; her own thoughts are trapped someplace between her mind and her mouth, refusing to come free in a way that does not hurt.

"It's not really anything I want to talk about, anyway, but--" Finally picking herself up off the floor, Athessa pauses to kick free of the covers and dig through her pack for elfroot and papers. "You don't have to tell me about what happened to you if you."

She hopes it comes across nicer than she thinks it sounds. Laura can talk to her, of course she can. After that ordeal...Athessa's probably one of the few people in Riftwatch who'd understand. Really understand. But she can also not talk to her, and Athessa won't hold it against her.

Laura does not know what to expect, in this hazy middle-of-the-night conversation; she is still working the sliver out of her skin, still trying to remember how to be awake and listen and speak. She might be asked questions. She might be shouted at. Everything is possible, and all of it raises her hackles.

Being told she does not have to say anything, however, is a surprise. Laura keeps walking, keeps digging at the wood in her hand--fingernails here, not claws--and squints down at the crystal, as if that might make everything clear.

She does, she knows, have to say something. The only communication they have is sound. Her voice is that selfsame snarl, more breath coming into it this time. She is breathing faster than before, walking around and around, and she does not know why. "I killed him. Not like that."

She swears under her breath. Not at Laura, or about what she said, but because her own hands are shaking and it's making it hard to roll this joint as easily as she usually can. But she manages, and pulls on a sweater and hauls the blanket off of her bed. Sighs.

"Bastard deserved it," she replies finally. Joint tucked safely behind her ear, blanket balled up in her arms, she starts walking, leaving her bed and the other dreamers behind. "I...dammit. I think what happened to me got mashed up with what happened to you. Different time and place and different bastard. And without you there to kill him before he--" She lets out a frustrated noise and sniffs, scrubbing at her face again. Fucking tears, who said you could spill out like this?

"I'm going to the roof to smoke."

She isn't sure if this is a dismissal or an offer; it sounds like both at once. All she's certain of is that, for all she's found uses for the crystals, they're frustrating her beyond belief right now. Every breath, short and shallow and full of things she can't seem to place, is a reminder that she can't smell what any of this means. They're only words, small and useless.

Laura ends up going to the roof, too, albeit in the least sensible way possible. Climbing the stone walls, leaving little gouges where she stabs at them with her claws, kills away some of the manic energy kicking through her, until she heaves herself up over the edge of the roof--the right roof, there are a few choices--and finds Athessa.

"Where were you?" she asks, without thinking to clarify what she means. For her, it is obvious: if she is not Nevarran, and she clearly isn't, she must have been someplace else.

Athessa is sitting cross-legged, blanket around her shoulders, lit joint between her fingers. Her hands aren't shaking as much anymore, but it's not the elfroot that stilled them. She climbed up the walls, too.

"Here," she says in answer, and then, to clarify: "Kirkwall."

The offending city looms in the distance, across the water, and she glares in its direction. Perhaps she should have never come back. Perhaps there's some purpose to the pain she has yet to see. Perhaps that's bullshit and there was no reason or purpose or meaning behind any of it.

"I was fifteen and alone and the sonuvabitch wanted to test out the goods before buying me. Called me Lowtown trash and... said that bullshit about rabbits." More tears get angrily scrubbed away and she takes a drag. The haze that makes it so much easier to let emotions wash over you cannot come soon enough.

Laura growls at that, looking out at the city, with all its dark buildings and occasional pinpricks of torches. The idea that anyone would say those things, do those things--there is no surprise, but it still hisses through her like a cold gust of wind to think of anyone speaking to Athessa that way.

"That is elfroot," she says, as a matter of confirmation, and perhaps as a request to explain. Athessa always smells a little like elfroot, from what she can remember, along with all the other scents that cling to her--and there are always several--and this seems to explain why.

(And, admittedly, as she curls up, knees hugged to her chest against the cool night air, it's better than speaking of the man that raped Athessa. She wants to know more--desperately, much more so than she consciously realizes--but she does not want to ask.)

"It is," she confirms, and before she goes on in explaining herself, she adjusts the blanket so there's more slack on one side and holds it up with her arm. An invitation to share, if Laura doesn't mind sitting so close. "When you grind it up fresh it makes a healing poultice, something about the sap or juice or whatever it is makes things heal faster. Dried, you can smoke it and it..."

How to explain? Athessa breathes out another cloud to give herself time to think about that.

"It makes things feel... easier. Lets your thoughts come one at a time instead of all at once. And feelings are less confusing because you can kinda look at them at arm's length instead of them bashing you over the head before you can see it coming."

Laura moves over, huddling closer until her shoulder bumps against Athessa's. Sharing a blanket reminds her of Matthias; it reminds her of Kiden, and of telling secrets. It is not at all objectionable.

Neither is the brief lesson on elfroot. She knows it is useful for healing, has used it for herself in that way, on wounds she knew would take too long to heal on their own, even with her body's considerable abilities there. But no one has ever told her it's possible to smoke it, nor what happens when one does.

She regards the bit of paper and herb, wrapped over and over on itself, and frowns. And feelings are less confusing-- "May I try it?"

Barely a question, nearly a demand, and not on purpose.

She raises her eyebrows in brief surprise, and nods.

"Sure. Try not to suck on it or something, you'll probably end up coughing and it won't feel good. Breathe in like normal, hold it in, and breathe out like normal." The joint is passed, and Athessa looks out over the water again.

The onset of the haze feels like wrapping a thick, warm scarf over your head and tying it under your chin, with only your face exposed. Tingling slightly in the sinuses, especially when the smoke is breathed out through the nostrils. Athessa likes to do that. It makes her feel like a dragon.

Start at the head, radiate down. It hits your limbs and they feel heavy, but unrestrained. Moving isn't harder, it's just more solid, deliberate. No second-guessing or over-thinking, just doing.

"After Devigny was done with me he dumped me off at a brothel. Real chummy with the bawd, so I guess I wasn't the first," Probably wasn't the last, either.

The advice is wisely given--Laura, having never smoked before, only observed others in doing so, would have ended in a fit of coughs otherwise. She breathes in, and smoke comes with the air, and holds her breath probably too long before letting it out. And then she holds the joint up before her face, staring at it with some mild fascination. "How long does it take?"

When do feelings stop being complicated? How long until she's what other people seem to be? Soon, she hopes. She hopes it'll be soon.

More importantly, what Athessa says...Laura shakes her head, the thought of Devigny intrusive. She pictures him like Deepstalker, lacking an alternative, and hopes he is dead. "How long were you there?"

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